3216

Yeah I was pretty surprised to hear that gushing coming out of Van Jones. These guys are so desperate to appear even-handed, they snap at every chance, and the snap carries them rubberband-like too far the other way.

You know who else made nice to the world for a while (round about the time of the 1936 Olympics)?

hashtagdailygodwin

3217

Yup. Trump isn’t going to take a thing away from angry old white folks.

3218

And as a Gen X’er I’m too apathetic to get angry enough to be motivated! Curse my ironic slacker detachment! Ooh hey, coffee!

3219

Dude, nevermind. Joey I’m not angry anymore.

Also, where is my mind?

3220

As a Gen X’er I am going to be plenty pissed when the well over 6 figures I’ve paid into FICA over the years results in zero benefit for me as they finally cut all the entitlement programs shortly before I’m eligible to receive benefits (which will be just after the largest wave of Boomers has died off).

My only consolation is that my fellow Gen X’ers and many Millennials will have been in charge for some time at that point, meaning that we might actually have a decent universal healthcare system in place by that point. Hopefully they will be close to perfecting medical nano-tech, 3D printing of replacement organs and other cool stuff for the masses by then, as it’s going to be the only thing I can look forward too as I’m living in my cardboard box somewhere on zero social security and zero retirement income (assuming a nice market crash during the Trump era and again a decade or so later…).

3221

And where’s my goddamn jetpack, goddammit?!

3222

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/837009379899621376

On the speech, the ‘VOICE’ thing was absolutely chilling. When he first started describing the agency I was like okay tough on crime whatever… and then he got to the point where it exists for victims of crime committed by immigrants? An vilification agency. What. The. F!

3223
3224

I think saying “America is over” is kind of silly, given we’ve been through worse.

All that’s happened is that we’re going to have to start trying harder to stay on top. It’s no longer the automatic thing that it was for decades.

3225

I think I can relate to that sense of trauma.

All my life I’ve been the smarty pants who pointed out how awful we were to the Indians and the slaves and how we had Jim Crow and lynchings, and how many governments the CIA toppled with no good reason and whatnot. And whenever people reflexively say America is “the greatest country on earth” it pisses me off. And I’ve expressed envy for places like New Zealand or Denmark that just get to go on quietly with the business of living.

But I think I still subconsciously have had a big head about being “an American” all the same. Living in a nation that stands alongside Imperial Rome, or China, or Victorian England, or Achaemenid Persia, as one of the dominant powers in human history, it’s like there’s this big cushion under you that you don’t even notice.

Is the air really going out of it? Only TIME… will tell.

3226

We’ve got some serious years to put in before we are on par with something like the Roman empire, which lasted, what, a thousand years?

3227

Well maybe it’s a good thing if we don’t lead the free world. To quote one of my favorite movies:

Pvt. Joe Bowers: Why me? Every time Metsler says, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” I get out of the way.
Sgt. Keller: Yeah, when he says that, you’re not supposed to choose “get out of the way.” It’s supposed to embarrass you into leading - or at least following.
Pvt. Joe Bowers: That doesn’t embarrass me.

3228

I’d say its peak lasted more like 200 or 300 years. A thousand years covers the whole span from early republic to late Empire.

But if you date American dominance from 1945, that’s 72 years of being the most powerful nation in the world, which puts us in the same ballpark as Victorian England or Bourbon France, anyway.

3229

From the same article:

With the State Department demonstratively shut out of meetings with foreign leaders, key State posts left unfilled, and the White House not soliciting many department staffers for their policy advice, there is little left to do. “If I left before 10 p.m., that was a good day,” said the State staffer of the old days, which used to start at 6:30 in the morning. “Now, I come in at 9, 9:15, and leave by 5:30.” The seeming hostility from the White House, the decades of American foreign-policy tradition being turned on its head, and the days of listlessness are taking a toll on people who are used to channeling their ambition and idealism into the detail-oriented, highly regimented busywork that greases the infinite wheels of a massive bureaucracy.

“They really want to blow this place up,” said the mid-level State Department officer. “I don’t think this administration thinks the State Department needs to exist. They think Jared [Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law] can do everything. It’s reminiscent of the developing countries where I’ve served. The family rules everything, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs knows nothing.”

Right now, those I’ve spoken to in the department seem to know very little about what’s going on. The staffer told me that she finds out what’s going on at State from the news—which she spends all day reading because, after years of having her day scheduled down to 15 minute blocks, she has nothing else to do. And even the news itself isn’t coming from official sources. There hasn’t been a State Department press briefing, once a daily ritual, since the new administration took over five weeks ago—though they’re scheduled to resume March 6. These briefings weren’t just for journalists. They also served as a crucial set of cues for U.S. diplomats all over the world about policy priorities, and how to talk about them. With no daily messaging, and almost no guidance from Washington, people in far-flung posts are flying blind even as the pace of their diplomacy hasn’t abated.

But while senior State appointees have yet to be appointed, other staff has been showing up. The Office of Policy Planning, created by George Kennan after World War II, is now filled not just with Ph.D.s, as it once was, but with fresh college graduates and a malpractice attorney from New Jersey whose sole foreign-policy credential seems to be that she was born in Hungary. Tillerson’s chief of staff is not his own, but is, according to the Washington Post, a Trump transition alum named Margaret Peterlin. “Tillerson is surrounded by a bunch of rather mysterious Trumpistas,” said the senior State official who recently left. “How the hell is he supposed to do his job when even his right hand is not his own person?” One State Department employee told me that Peterlin has instructed staff that all communications with Tillerson have to go through her, and even scolded someone for answering a question Tillerson asked directly, in a meeting.

3230

The America leading the free world as an example to the free world is over. This has taught all our allies, and enemies, that we’re not the reliable base they’ve always thought we would be. Some might say the others beefing up their game is a good thing, but that also means we won’t be the dominant voice at the table anymore.

Who would you prefer?

3231

Great Movie, Watched it at the Inauguration :)

3232

You’re begging the question. Why does the world need a leader?

3233

Man you are full of shit… :)

3234

But those nasty boomers sure have put us close to Roman Empire Collapse mode.

Okay…sorry. But gawd I hate the blaming of everything on one generation, like they somehow controlled the world they entered and turned it all into a steaming lump of shit just because. I mean those boomers controlled everything everywhere enabling them to put the squeeze on all the others out there. And oh…the only the white boomers. Forgot that part.

3235

Most likely at that point we’ll be the ones taking things from the millenials- though we won’t be as greedy or deplorable.